Wittgensteins, Heideggers, and Gadamers, Oh My!

To exist in the human sense of course means not merely taking up three dimensional space through a duration of time, but engaging with the world in meaningful ways. Many such ways count as thinking, and some count further as knowing, but much else that is essential to being human meets neither criteria, and is thus never considered in most philosophical reflection. We postulate that all but a very few matters of philosophical import can avoid relying on some sort of philosophical anthropology, however thinkly sketched or merely implied, to serve as the cornerstone of the ontology, again frequently only implied, that provides the background to their inquiry. Consequently, one needs to grasp adequately the contours and layout of human existence, beyond mere thinking and knowing, in order to gain the right orientation for any sort of ethical, political, or even epistemological investigation, and so on. One’s starting point is everything in philosophy, and we advocate beginning with full-blown human engagement in the world.